Pentagon drops Internet voting plans for military personnel

It cited security concerns for the move but plans to keep studying the idea

By Todd R. Weiss

February 5, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The U.S. Department of Defense has decided, for now at least, to drop its efforts to give overseas U.S. military personnel voting access over the Internet, because of concerns about the security of the system.
In a Jan. 30 memo to David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wrote that "in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes that would be cast in the SERVE Internet voting project, thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election, I hereby direct you to take immediate steps to ensure that no voters use the system to register or vote via the Internet."
The memo was released today by a Defense Department spokesman who was asked about the status of the controversial voting program, which is called SERVE (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment).
Wolfowitz said in the memo that "efforts will continue to demonstrate the technical ability to cast ballots over the Internet," using knowledge and experience gained so far. He wrote that he would reconsider his decision in the future "if it can be shown that the integrity of the election results can be assured."

"The bottom line is we could have our president selected by [hackers in] Iran."

—Barbara Simons, ACM past president and technology policy expert

The Wolfowitz memo came nine days after a 34-page report, "A Security Analysis of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment" (download PDF), was sent by a group of technology experts to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, criticizing the idea as it was envisioned (see story).
The group of about a dozen computer experts was asked by the Defense Department to review the idea of Internet voting, which was proposed after the 2000 presidential elections to make it easier for members of the military and other U.S. citizens to cast ballots when they're overseas. The Federal Voting Assistance Program was assembled by the Pentagon to build an Internet voting system.
One of the writers of the report, Barbara Simons, a past president of the Association of Computing Machinery and a technology policy expert, said today that she's pleased with Wolfowitz's decision.

"I think that the DOD will be making the right decision in canceling this current effort to hold Internet voting," Simons said. "We share their concern that all the votes in the military arrive on time and be counted. We're certainly prepared to work with them on trying to devise a method that would allow that to happen without jeopardizing their security."
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